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The Dark Wood of Postmodernity (Space, Faith, Allegory)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Bill Brown
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Abstract

As a way of restaging certain questions about postmodernity (is it marked by rupture or repetition, or is it all illusory?), this essay imagines Fredric Jameson's iconic disorientation at the Bonaventure Hotel as a reenactment of Dante's crisis in the selva oscura. That imaginative act allows one to see how a nonmodern measure makes postmodernism visible (the concept of “cognitive mapping,” for instance, derives from Kevin Lynch's appreciation of the urban fabric of Florence). And it allows one to perceive how Jameson's response to our contemporary condition assumes a Dantean cast, becoming an incorporative act of totalizing, manifest stylistically and conceptually, that deploys allegory to trans-code phenomena into the terms of the dominant system. To what degree does the internalization of such a hermeneutic enterprise (a medieval Christian legacy) render religion as such imperceptible, compelling us to perceive acts committed in the name of Islam as merely a displacement of (proper) politics?

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 120 , Issue 3 , May 2005 , pp. 734 - 750
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2005

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